THERE can be few finer views from a train in the kingdom than that from Durham station.
The city and its sloping roofs are laid out beneath the viaduct like a toy town, while above them rises an unconquerable cliff on which sits a World Heritage Site: the squat but impregnable shape of the castle next to the soaring, massive towers of the cathedral.
And it is all – well, some of it, at least – down to the railway engineer who carved the 11-arch viaduct 100ft high and 704 yards long out of Windy Hill.
Although people love the view, he created it all for coal: to create a line from Bishop Auckland to Sunderland on the Wear to break the stranglehold the port on the Tees at Middlesbrough had on Durham coal.
That engineer was Thomas Elliot Harrison, who’d grown up in Houghton-le-Spring and was a close associate of Robert Stephenson.
He first rose to prominence in 1834 when, aged only 26, he oversaw the construction of the Victoria Viaduct over the Wear near the Penshaw Monument – a viaduct that ceased carrying the East Coast Main Line in 1872 but still has the largest span of a masonry railway bridge in England.
At first, young Harrison planned to span the Wear with a huge iron bridge, but then he consulted the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, James Walker, who suggested a masonry structure based on the Alcantara bridge in Spain.
This is a Roman bridge, built over the River Tagus in about AD100 by order of Emperor Trajan.
However, the Roman emperor's men didn't have the problems that Harrison had to contend with. Around and beneath the Wear at Penshaw were old mine workings.
Harrison was in charge of the construction of the bridge to Walker’s designs. They had planned to have two identically-sized central spans, but soon Harrison discovered that the only way he could plant the legs on secure foundations was by increasing one span to 160ft and decreasing the other to 147ft.
Lopsided, work began on March 17, 1836, and the last stone was laid on June 28, 1838 – the day of Queen Victoria's coronation, so it was named in Her Majesty’s honour.
It cost £40,338 to build (about £3.7m in today’s values) and, even though it was only on a four-mile stretch of line, it was one of the great engineering feats of its day.
It was 135ft above the river level so it was the tallest viaduct in Europe. Even today it is the second tallest in Britain, behind Ballochmyle Viaduct, which is 169ft above the River Ayr in East Ayrshire.
Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner visited the Victoria in the early 1950s. He looked up at the nearby Penshaw Monument – built in 1848 as a half-size copy of the temple of Theseum in Athens – and asked: "Is there any other place where one can stand beneath a 'Roman' viaduct and see a 'Greek' temple nearby?"
After such beginnings Harrison was made the chief engineer of the North Eastern Railway when it was formed in 1854 and so was handed the job of joining Bishop Auckland with Durham across 11 miles of rolling rivers and roaring gorges. His solutions to these obstacles included the 11 Arches viaduct on the edge of Bishop and climaxed with the 11 arches that give unrivalled views of Durham.
The line opened to freight on August 19, 1856, but because the Board of Trade was not convinced by the strength of some of Harrison's structures, it wasn't allowed to open to passengers until April 1, 1857.
"The opening has been so long delayed in consequence of portions of the larger embankments slipping – the slidings being caused partly by the wetness of the season," said the Darlington and Stockton Times (D&ST).
The ceremonial opening day train decided to travel the line from north to south, so, made up of 22 carriages, it set off from Leamside, to the north of Durham City, at 11.35am.
After a few minutes it stopped to inspect Harrison’s first Wear crossing, the nine arch viaduct at Belmont (above). It was 694ft long and 130ft above the water – "higher than the celebrated High Level Bridge in Newcastle", noted the D&ST.
The area was full of old, unmapped colliery workings – some 14 fathoms beneath the riverbed on which the bridge's legs were to stand. Belmont was a beggar to build! However, the D&ST approvingly said that the use of “Roman cement” would hold Harrison's bricks in place.
The Romans had discovered a sand near the town of Pozzuoli that was full of volcanic ash so when it was mixed with lime mortar it set under water. In the early 19th Century, the British discovered they had a similar limestone, known as 'cementstone”, in layers on the North-East cliffs, but it was being thrown away by miners searching for alum. Cement works sprung up along the cliffs from Whitby to Saltburn.
Harrison used this 'Roman cement' to hold his bricks, which were made on site using the latest steam-powered technology, into his viaducts.
After Belmont the next viaduct the opening day train came to was the Durham showstopper. A fabulous photograph, believed to be the oldest of the city, shows the wooden formers in place over which the bricks were laid.
"It was a most difficult task to obtain sufficient foundations for this structure," said the D&ST. "Piles of great length had to be driven through peat-moss, quicksand etc by steam power."
South of Durham there were two timber bridges over the rivers Browney and Deerness, before the ceremonial train rattled onto Newton Cap Viaduct, which had taken contractor Richard Cail, from Newcastle, three years to build. It is a remarkable structure – 828ft long and 105ft above the riverbed – although such was the unstable nature of the ground that its foundations were sunk a further 20ft into the riverbed.
"From this bridge a charming view is obtained, " said the D&ST.
The Durham County Advertiser went further: "The occupants of the train obtained a bird's eye view of the episcopal residence of the prelate of this diocese, and then a few gentle puffs of the engine carried the train through a short tunnel under Bondgate to its destination at Bishop Auckland."
Today, the viaduct gives its name to the Eleven Arches site on which the Kynren night show is performed, and the volunteers in the production are known as 'archers'.
On opening day, they arrived in Bishop at 1pm and departed at 1.30pm for a two-and-a-half hour luncheon, at Durham Town Hall, with speeches, toasts and much backslapping.
The journey back took them through three stations: Hunwick, which was surrounded by collieries and brickworks, and which is now a private house; Willington, which has now been demolished, and Brancepeth, which is now a private house. On that opening day, "five or six" collieries were being sunk near the station, showing how the line would exploit the coalfield.
A fourth station – Brandon Siding – opened in 1861. It only operated a Saturday service for passengers until March 1878 when it gained a full service and had its name changed to Brandon Colliery.
There were two junctions on the line: Deerness Valley, where a branch line went west to Waterhouses, and Relly Mill, where a spur track connected to the Consett line.
The line opened up the world to the people of Bishop Auckland. They could catch through trains to watch the football at Sunderland – is it because of this railway connection that the people of Bishop and Durham are more likely to support the Black Cats than they are the Magpies? – and, in return, the people of Sunderland could travel direct to the Durham dales for their holidays. After 1868, when the Tees Valley Railway opened, Cotherstone became known as 'Little Sunderland' because it was such a popular tourist resort.
But this 19th Century age of railway mania could not last all of the 20th Century. The Beeching Axe of the 1960s brutally chopped up the line from Bishop to Durham which had acted as a relief route when the main line was shut for engineering.
Much of the line closed in May 1964, with the last train crossing the 11 arches of Newton Cap in 1968.
Durham County Council bought the viaduct in 1972 with a view to demolishing it and the lower, narrow, older Skirlaw road bridge beneath it. The plan was to replace both with a single crossing for cars.
But the people of Bishop Auckland rebelled. They fought the Battle of Newton Cap and, in 1987, saved the viaduct.
At a cost of £5.85m, a reinforced concrete slab was lain across its deck and it opened to motor vehicles on July 21, 1995 – the first time a rail bridge had been converted to a road bridge in Britain. Today it carries the A689 to Crook.
Nine-and-a-half miles of the trackbed north of the viaduct up to Brandon has been turned into a public path and cycleway, and the northern section of the line from Relly Mill has been the main line since 1871.
That, of course, includes the Durham Viaduct, giving travellers the most remarkable views of the cathedral and castle, thanks to TE Harrison.
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